Lithography apparatus, and method of manufacturing an article

Abstract

The present invention provides a lithography apparatus that performs patterning on a substrate with a beam, the apparatus comprising a blanker configured to perform blanking of the beam, and a controller configured to control the blanker, wherein the controller is configured to sequentially perform quantization accompanied by diffusion of an error to generate a command value for the blanking with respect to each of a plurality of pixels on the substrate, and the error is an error between a target value of dose and a predicted value of dose at a target pixel of the plurality of pixels.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A lithography apparatus that performs patterning on a substrate with a beam, the apparatus comprising:
 a blanker configured to perform blanking of the beam; and   a controller configured to control the blanker,   wherein the controller is configured to sequentially perform quantization accompanied by diffusion of an error to generate a command value for the blanking with respect to each of a plurality of pixels on the substrate, and   the error is an error between a target value of dose and a predicted value of dose at a target pixel of the plurality of pixels.   
     
     
         2 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the controller is configured to obtain the predicted value based on a plurality of the command value. 
     
     
         3 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the controller is configured to obtain the predicted value based on an operating characteristic of the blanker. 
     
     
         4 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the controller has information indicating a relationship between a plurality of the command value and a dose at the target pixel in a case where all of the plurality of the command value are not the same, and is configured to obtain the predicted value based on the information. 
     
     
         5 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the blanker includes one of a transmissive device configured to selectively transmit the beam, and a reflective device configured to selectively reflect the beam. 
     
     
         6 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the controller is configured to perform binarization as the quantization. 
     
     
         7 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the patterning is performed with a plurality of the beam. 
     
     
         8 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the beam includes a charged particle beam. 
     
     
         9 . The apparatus according to  claim 1 , wherein the controller is configured to obtain the target value based on an occupancy of a pattern to be subjected to the patterning in each of the plurality of pixels. 
     
     
         10 . A method of manufacturing an article, the method comprising steps of:
 performing patterning on a substrate using a lithography apparatus; and   processing the substrate, on which the patterning has been performed, to manufacture the article,   wherein the lithography apparatus performs patterning on the substrate with a beam, and includes:   a blanker configured to perform blanking of the beam; and   a controller configured to control the blanker,   wherein the controller is configured to sequentially perform quantization accompanied by diffusion of an error to generate a command value for the blanking with respect to each of a plurality of pixels on the substrate, and   the error is an error between a target value of dose and a predicted value of dose at a target pixel of the plurality of pixels.